Paper info

IS DISARMING GOLIATH POSSIBLE? BENEFITING FROM RELATIONSHIP WITH POWERFUL CUSTOMER

Dariusz Siemieniako and Maciej Mitr?ga

The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

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This study aims at exploring supplier practices oriented at benefiting from relationships with powerful customers as well as interconnections of these practices with different power sources that evolve in such business relationships. Some of the identified suppliers’ practices and tactics are consistent with prior research and some of them appear to be specific for this study and bring new light to existing knowledge about asymmetric relationships. In this first group, ‘learning to work together’ and ‘specific investments in development resources and competencies’ were the most important ones. The second group comprises ‘orientation on product specialization strategy’, ‘extending the value chain’, ‘excellence in communication on organizational and personal level’ and ‘Key Account Management’. The research results show the connections between these practices and some concrete benefits acquired through cooperation with dominant customer. Among them increased competitiveness was perceived as the crucial one. This study contributes to the literature by picturing the evolution of relationship power asymmetry with regard to particular power sources. The research suggests that such various power sources may be used as a pathways by companies to mitigate the dominance of powerful customers and increase benefits derived from working relationship. Research results also illustrates that the existence of power asymmetry creates only a potential of utilizing power in a coercive way and such option is frequently not chosen by big customers.